


tears & truth

by emmamere



Series: a gathering of abnormalities (hxh) [3]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Blood and Gore, Delusions, Dementia, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 09:45:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14352939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmamere/pseuds/emmamere
Summary: Killua is already hollow - but he has more suffering to endure.





	tears & truth

Registering pain is not the same as processing it. As comprehending it. As acknowledging the damage done and moving past it. Killua felt the dull ache and merely lived with it as it tore his innards to shreds.

His fingers search her prone form, exploiting every fold in the fabric of her clothes, as if searching for the guilty parasites. Her eyes are wide and glassy in the fear that he might save her. He does not. The empty pill bottle laid to rest in her pearl-white palm has already done so.

A terrible scream cuts through the air as the girl goes limp and dies.

\---

She hadn’t processed her pain, either. That was why her tortured mind and beaten soul told her of the sole solution. And that was why she listened. 

There is no funeral held for Alluka. The only memorial is in the mind of Killua. In it, he sees her, in peace, gowned in her prettiest frilly dress. He always said it was silly-looking, to which she had pouted, but dead Alluka looks stunningly beautiful in the garment.

In truth her corpse is burnt as is; clothed in yesterday, today, and all the tomorrows to follow. She wears the rags of Cinderella, the purest of maidens. Her glass slippers may be shattered, but she is gorgeous all the same.

The House of Zoldyck is no funeral home and does not distribute the ashes of their fallen. Killua has only his memories to refer. But perhaps that is what is best - he would rather to envision the excitable, joyous Alluka of his own recollection than to imagine her with a basis of charred remains.

His chest is heavy under the weight of an undefusable weapon, a ticking bomb of nuclear proportions with no clear trigger in sight. He would soon find that a lack of a clear trigger equates to endless detonations.

\---

Killua sobs and shakes in utter grief. His very being is hollowed. He no longer exists as he once did. The all-consuming void inside him threatens to do just that; consume all. The sheer anger as it clenches and squeezes his heart until dry provides a steroid for his thirsty nerves. It cannot be quenched as much as it cannot be understood. 

The damning hate is akin to the bizarre feeling of alienation as Gon kisses him for the first time, mere days later. The passion like a drug, his mind slowly drifting from his body, and suddenly the ravenette feels Killua’s tears on his cheeks as he thinks back to the sensation of his brother’s flesh on his skin and his claw-like hands entwining with his own. Anger flares, and he shoves Gon away, wiping the taste from his lips. 

“‘m sorry, Gon,” he mutters, stumbling slightly. He despises the small smile adorning Gon’s face, like somehow he still loved him, even after the apparent rejection.

He can’t tell. Can’t tell him she’s gone. Can’t tell him that his sister is a burnt husk rotting in an incinerator. Can’t tell him she overdosed because of the scars crisscrossing her back and the horrible words still ringing in her ears.

So instead he makes excuses. Like he always does.

“Killu?” Gon’s puppy-dog eyes gaze into guarded ceruleans. 

“H-have to go.”

The world is seen blurred and unfocused. Killua can’t distinguish between open air, person, and car as he sprints through the streets with no destination in mind. Gon is following, maybe shouting something. He can’t quite tell.

Suddenly a scream; Gon’s. Not a yell but a shriek.

He feels vaguely confused. Then, blinding pain reverberating throughout his skull. A splatter of bright red blood on the pavement. Gon’s cries of horror root him to reality before he begins falling down, down, done.

\---

“...likely damage to the frontal lobe…”

“...circumstances ruled as a possible suicide attempt…”

Warm amber eyes peer into his own. “Killua?”

The stark white walls of a hospital room slowly come into Killua’s sight. He groans and presses his face into the sheets at the harsh lights. 

Gon looks pained. Concerned.

“What’s going on, Killu? Did you really try to kill yourself?”

He shakes his head ‘no’. “‘Course not.”

The black-haired teen furrowed his brows. He sits at the corner of the bed. Killua hates the chalky color of his surroundings; he concentrates on the vibrant green of Gon’s t-shirt. Ridiculous, yet endearing.

He’s released three days later, fresh off of pain medication and with a horrid headache pulsating in his cranium. Something feels strange. He supposes that’s normal for one who had just witnessed the suicide of his sister then gotten bashed straight in the forehead with a moving vehicle.

It isn’t.

\---

His body is corrupted by infestation. It writhes and crawls under his skin. Soft white intersped with holes bored by maggots and worms. Dirt and blackish blood under his fingernails. Once-sharp blue eyes veiled and shotted with red tendrils. Grime sodden smoke is expelled from his throat and soaks the air. Disgusting. Repulsive. He cannot bear to glance at himself in the mirror.

Brown orbs bathed in a scarlet haze. Inappropriate, scandalous goals in his sight. Words of comfort drowned in haughty laughs and jeers. This man has fooled him for far too long, Killua decides. Only a true monster lies in wait beneath bright shamrock curtains. 

His very mind is the first weapon. The second, a lamp, in all its convenience. It rips life from flesh and steals blood from veins. The vermillion gore sprays against domestic simplicity. It sickens whatever is left of his consciousness, but not nearly so much as what lay motionless before him. It was a monster, in all of truth and real.

Fangs, alabaster white and dagger sharp, perch ready on the fiend’s jaw. Slitted eyes the hue of red wine prepared to strip sanity. Hands now massively hyperbolized and finished with scythe-like talons fit to dominate. Killua feels blood abandon his circulation, humanity vacate his mind, and pierced skin harden his muscle, even though the carcass will never again rise.

\---

It is not the terrifying sharpness of pain that destroys Killua. It is the obliterating numbness. He is defined in expression. The loving warmth of his partner’s fingers as they tangle. Alluka’s clear, luminous laughs and squeals as they tumble down the many rolling hills and dirty their pristine clothing with the garish grass. Killua is only himself when he is allowed to be. He savors the giddy feeling of freedom, thick and bubbling in his very soul.

But it never quite lasts and he always finds himself back in the stone walls of the Zoldyck mansion. 

Gon had known, bizarrely enough, that the borders of the property were marked by fences topped with barbed wire. What he didn’t know is that the gates existed in every square foot. There was no escape, no independence, no life, as Killua regardless of where he happened to be was caged.

Beige, it is. Beige is the color of the boy’s colorless tears. Beige is the gnawing in Alluka’s heart that surrendered only when she did. Beige is Zoldyck, and Zoldyck is beige.

\---

His fevered movements are deluged with passion and fervor. He nearly cracks at the absolute anger in the fragmented howls of the victim; the abuser; the cause. Ink-black hair rapidly stains sanguine. 

Dead dead dead DEAD

CAN YOU SEE IT?

The assassin’s obsidian eyes born of death and destruction. Ebony feathers from his devil wings litter Killua’s entire world. Lucifer, he tells himself. This beast is not worthy of the blessing that is life. His forked tongue, drenched with blood and dowsed in hellfire. The demon’s leather-like, sable tail, convulses in the vain hope that struggle still has purpose. The boy remembers the many times when that tail wrapped around his bruised pelvis, sliding across his skin before he even knew that he was being abused. 

And now the vampire and the devil have been sent to Hades, where they will be subject to eternal damnation.

A shard of the broken looking glass stares down Killua. To his horror, the vermin that had invaded his body yet remain. He is just as brimming with sin as he has always been. He thinks to the corpse of his baby sister, decaying flesh swimming with parasites.

He must be the one to end it. So he plunges the blade, now, into his own throat.


End file.
